Hard Work Exposed In Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden writes in “Those Winter Sundays” that love often times requires sacrifice and goes unappreciated. The father is depicted as a serious man that has always worked hard for the benefit of the speaker. Hayden writes “with cracked hands the ached from labor in the weekday weather…” (3-4) for the the reader to understand the effect his hard work has on him. Sundays are typically viewed as a day of rest, however the first line of the poem, “Sundays too my father got up early” (1) demonstrated the love and concern he has for the speaker’s well-being. The father could simply sleep in as it is one of his few days of relaxation, but rather sacrifices sleeping in to keep the house warm. The line, “No one ever thanked him” (5) further addresses
the father’s selflessness. He was never thanked for working in the cold during the week or heating the house, but he did it anyway. Like all loving relationships, he would get frustrated by this. Hayden writes that the speaker was “fearing the chronic angers of that house” (9). The speaker’s father felt unappreciated for all of his sacrifices and was angered by this which would felt throughout the house. In the final lines of the poem, “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (13-14) the speaker, speaking from an older perspective, finally appreciates his father for all he did for him.